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Monday, July 27, 2009

Sent to you by Jack via Google Reader:

You know what? I have not shaved since the death of Billy Mays. Is it a touching tribute to America's most beloved bearded pitchman? Is it sheer laziness and poor grooming habits? Or maybe just maybe is it a little bit of both? OK, it's mostly the second one, but I must confess a certain fondness for ol' Billy.

At any rate, every day this week I will be posting some reviews here until I either get through all the zines I have to review or I get bored. Oh, and I got me one of those fancy dan new facebook pages. It's www.facebook.com/ericfishlegs. Add me as a friend. Or don't. Either way.

INNER SWINE Vol.14 #4 December 2008. Josh Saitz who does the zine NEGATIVE CAPABILITY (www.negcap.com) told me that he recently had a dream that he, I, Jeff Somers of INNER SWINE) and R. Lee (UNDERWORLD CRAWL which is one of my favorites and you should be able to find a review of it somewhere on this site) went on a zine tour. He said it was a huge disaster because everywhere we went people to read people just thought "Who the hell are these assholes?" I mention this because this zine has just been reviewed so often that it's hard to come up with something new to say. The theme of this issue is "Kids" and he makes a convincing argument that kids do indeed suck and rule the world. There's a lot of good stuff in this issue. I even found Jeff's story about taking guitar lessons for the first time in his life at age 35 to be almost inspiring. he also wrote a brief anti-Kindle piece which reminded me of something- my Mom got a Kindle for Xmas she loves it and says she rarely even goes to the library anymore. because instead of reading books for free she can now pay $10 to read them on a little machine. I don't quite fathom how that makes any sense, but who am I to argue? 60 pages, 5.5 x 8.5, send either $2 or a trade to Jeff Somers PO Box 3024, Hoboken, NJ, 07030 mreditor@innerswine.com

SLICES- Hey, I just remembered I owed Jaime (the author of this zine) a trade. I'd better get on that. Jaime Crespo does a weekly comic strip called Slice O' Life and this zine collects what Jaime considers to be his 40 best cartoons. His strips are mainly about odd people Jaime has met over the years, many of whom seem to do a lot of drugs and die bizarre deaths. Some of the comics are funny, some were oddly touching, all are worth reading. Jaime also does a zine called TORTILLA that features more comics and stories by Jaime and like SLICES it's also worth reading. SLICES is 40 pages, 5.5 x 8.5, send $5 to Jaime Crespo, PO Box 112 San Anselmo, CA 94979 www.jaimecrespo.com

CRANKY BUDDHA #7- I like this kind of zine. It's basically a compendium of useless and bizarre information (one tid bit so useless and bizarre that I mentioned it way back in issue 7 of my own zine.) along with some reviews of books considered to be "hobo literature", the entire text of Calamity Jane'sautobiography, a "stupid cop trick" that is truly stupid, kind of cruel, and I am ashamed to admit I would love to see somebody try and a review of a strange movie featuring a cameo by Col. Sanders. I enjoyed this one. 60 pages, 5.5 x 8.5, $2 or trade Danny Swank 2262 SE 39th Ave, Portland OR 97214 drdannyswank@gmail.comwww.crankybuddah.com